2024 was a great year. Here are my top 10 photos, followed by what we did:

Family:

• Peter was in 8th/9th grade. He is now the tallest member of our family. He played basketball and made the Lehi Junior High team. He also played soccer, flag football, piano, and percussion, and started a job officiating sports.
• Curtis: His first year of junior high. He played tackle football as a lineman and played basketball. And soccer, but it’ll be his last year. He tried out ceramics and played a lot of video games.
• Henry: He performed in two plays, choir, and garden club with Mom. He’s learning to play piano. He started 4th garden in the A.L.L. gifted class and is doing quite well.
• Zack: Finished preschool at Skyridge, and started kindergarten. He participated in soccer, basketball, and swimming, and loves playing with friends.
• Evelina: Loves adventures, and going about anywhere. We do story time, and she still loves her blankie.
• Joe: He continues to work at Lone Peak Hospital, mentored a student there, and loves to work in his shop wood turning.
• We did a lot of traveling this year! Goblin Valley, Disneyland, St. George including Zions, the Redwoods and Oregon Coast, and Peter & Mom to Six Flags, Universal Studios, and Knotts Berry Farms.
• There were also lots of local adventures, hikes, park visits, and fun times at home.

My Career:

• I finished up my licensing exams, and I’m officially a licensed landscape architect. Big goal complete!
• My design business was rather lackluster: I decided to focus more on developing instructional content, which takes a long time, and my career is not my focus right now.
• I did publish a free online course, available here.

Home:

• We focused a lot on landscaping. We completed our front yard landscaping and got a rebate from that from Utah Water Savers. We also planted a pollinator garden.
• We grew a big vegetable garden and freeze-dried much of the produce. The biggest harvests were 8 huge hubbard squash and sweet potatoes that individually reached 11 lbs. And more tomatoes than I knew what to do with.
• Inside the house, we added a swamp cooler, refinished the banister, changed out some wall art, and moved bedrooms around when my sister moved out.

Ministry:

• The boys were active participants with Young Men’s at church and Joe was one of their leaders.
• I moved from Primary Activities (doing activities with the boys) to Relief Society (the group for women), ending up as a counselor in the presidency.
• I continued a personal goal program with my sisters we dubbed Mountain Club.

Christmas came. It was surrounded by family parties, but Christmas was a day at home. We went on a walk to see Christmas lights and sing a few carols on Christmas Eve. And then we got down to the business of opening presents, which could not come fast enough for Zack. Christmas morning brought more presents. Our biggest present this year was an inflatable hot tub that has been a big hit.

Christmas changes when you have older kids. The younger ones love presents, but with the older ones, it feels more about spending time together. And that is better.

I’ve done a matching game for our family Christmas Cards for the last few years. Here’s this year’s game: https://puzzel.org/memory/play?p=-OEt0GQ9in6XZJyoi6Wb

Some days are filled with fun adventures, like going to the zoo, the park, or the children’s museum.

Other days are filled with laundry, cleaning, and, worst of all, sick children. I’ve done eight loads of laundry the last two days and gotten up four times in the middle of the night to help clean up some type of mess caused by stomach flu. And the family pictures below involve multiple people super upset because no one can smile at the same time, and everyone would rather goof off or do something other than stand and smile for the camera.

I still love my family, even on the hard days!

I’ve had a very full life recently. I’ve had many things that I longed for: lots of travel, time to go hiking, and time to work on projects. And lately, instead of wanting more, I’ve wanted less. Fewer things to do and time to reflect on what I’m doing, why, and how I want to continue.

There seems to always be a push to get things done. But a life of constantly being busy doesn’t often allow for the things that are most meaningful: saying I love you, appreciating the things we already have, just listening to people, laughing and having fun.

I will always be a busy person: it’s part of nature, and I have five children…but maybe I don’t need to worry so much about filling in every single moment with productive things. Instead, I can take a minute to reflect, do something that doesn’t have some great purpose, and spend more time doing nothing with the people I love.

Picture: we went to a Salt Lake Stars Game, hiking at Wasatch Mountain State Park, and pics from normal life.

In exciting news for the family, Peter made the 9th-grade basketball team. Curtis also made a basketball team, so basketball season will soon take over much of our free time.

Over the weekend, we went out to the Tree of Life garden at Thanksgiving Point. It was really cool, but also a little cold.

We also went out to the hot springs. The Inlet Hot Springs ranks low on our list of hot springs we’ve visited, but it’s also nearby and free. Everyone enjoyed it, but everyone also needed a shower after to remove dirt.

Just a compilation of photos from Curtis’s football season I haven’t posted yet:

Game photos are taken by Greg Baird, @photogreger. He played nose guard and right tackle (I think). He’s a lineman, the biggest kid on the team, and played both ways, almost all the game.

I have zero pictures of Peter playing flag football. He’s an awesome player, his team was ranked first and lost out in a close game for the semifinals. He is a great wide receiver and also gets a ton of interceptions.